Last week I called and woke up my parents. It seems that I miscalculated the time, I was off by an hour. I have fallen victim to daylights savings time.
Daylight savings time is the practice of advancing the clock by an hour in the summer to effectively move the extra hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. I suppose the thought process is that people will not need to turn on the lights so early in the evening and thus save some energy.
It is an interesting thought, but it seems a bit unrealistic that people will be sitting at the kitchen table eating their cheerios in the dark. If I could set my own schedule I would see the savings due to sleeping in and staying up late, but the corporate world isn’t quite ready for that yet. There have been some studies into the actual energy savings but the savings seem to be inconclusive.
I find it to be similar to a protest I once heard take place in Germany. I cannot remember what the goal was but the people taking part were planning on not putting any gas into their car on a certain day. This was supposed to be a blow to the energy companies. My argument at the time to a friend was this was not depriving the energy companies of anything, it was just a slight shift of demand.
I guess I am not a big believer in daylights savings time. However, I recently read an article that implies that this is a conspiracy of big candy. Well, daylights savings is not the conspiracy but the extra three week shift to ensure that Halloween has early night darkness.
Candy companies wouldn’t lobby congress to extend daylight savings time by a few weeks for their own personal gain. Would they?
